1910 looked like a rather gloomy start of the year for Tolkien. He just went through rough childhood as an orphan. Father Francis, his guardian, didn't approve his relationship with Edith. He was afraid of not getting scholarship and disappointing his guardian.
Tolkien's diaries are owned by Tolkien Estate, kept at Bodleian Library, and only open for approved researchers, so I can only see quotes. But that first entry is so striking for me: direct, tired, unsure. Murky waves that contributed to one's uncertainty when facing a new year.
Just like how aspects of Tolkien's life bled to his works (especially Middle-earth legendarium), his diaries blended his personal fear, happiness, amusement, sadness, intellectual interests, and mundane comments.
My favorites are entries about his son, Christopher. A 1924 entry after Christopher's birth was, "Now I would not go without what God has sent." Entry in 1930s described Christopher as "nervy, irritable, cross-grained, self tormenting, cheeky, yet lovable, much like himself."
The most relatable entry was probably the one he wrote after the death of his friend, C. S. Lewis. From late 1963/1964: "life is grey and grim. I can't get anything done, between stateness and boredom (confined to quarters), anxiety and distraction....(cont.)
What am I going to do? Be sucked down into residence in a hotel or old people's home or club, without books or contacts or talk with men? God help me!" This sounds way more personal and "unfiltered" compared to his letters, which were curated and officially published.
Influences of Tolkien's personal life in his works are not secret, but seeing these entries gave me extra dose of emotional honesty. As someone of active mind, who had loved and lost, he was afraid of confinement, loneliness, abandonment. Or, as Eowyn said, he feared "a cage".
This is something I can understand as someone who first read Tolkien during the most turbulent times of my life. A teenager who had experienced authoritarian era, book purging, political upheaval, regional financial crisis, and fear of horizontal conflicts.
On top of those things, I had to deal with personal issues because I was used to suppress feeling and emotions. I had to leave home for study. My father was unfairly booted from his job. There was anxiety over my future. I would've burst if not for Tolkien's books I packed.
Tolkien's unique way of describing characters grounded me. He wasn't shy in describing affections between his characters. He made them experience fear, death, betrayal, uncertainty. However, he also gave them moments of blissful rest and sense of hope.
The most important thing? In the story that ends all the stories (LoTR), he gave bittersweet ends for his characters. It was comforting for me. I accepted that Frodo must leave to heal, but Sam could come home and help healing the Shire. Tolkien validated my fear AND soothed it.
Honestly, it's rather comforting seeing Tolkien's gloomy entry that he wrote on the New Year. After all, it's okay if we start the new year with less festive mood. Perhaps the best thing we can hope for is enough good things to crack some light between the cloud of bad things.
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Chocolate was once associated with witchcraft in colonial Latin America. Women traditionally prepared chocolate for drink and folk medicine, so there was fear that they practiced witchcraft through chocolate, making them subjects of Inquisition's crackdown. 1/8 #FolkloreSunday
Chocolate was known as the "food of gods" and currency in ancient times. According to legend, Aztec emperor Montezuma II drank gallons of it daily for vitality. Chocolate was also consumed for strength in giving birth and menopause, or staying awake for rituals and revelries. 2/8
Women traditionally prepared chocolate drink and the association carried as the Inquisition purged "heretical practices", including folk medicine. Historian Martha Few said that many testimonies featured chocolate, like those who feared women put potion in their morning cup. 3/8
Letters from Father Christmas originates from Tolkien's tradition of writing illustrated letters to his children every Christmas, from 1920 to 1943, making them look like they come from a figure called "Father Christmas". 1/8
A 🧵for #BookWormSat #Christmas and #Tolkien
Every letter described Father Christmas' adventures in the North Pole, with squiggly handwriting and special stamps and envelopes to make them look real. In this first letter (1920), he reassured John Tolkien that he'd deliver toys to Oxford and drew his house for him. 2/8
Over time, Tolkien added new characters, from Ilbereth the Elf secretary to North Polar Bear and two bear cubs, describing and drawing their shenanigans, like when the bear slipped while carrying a pile of gifts or falling (again!) when fixing the damaged roof. 3/8
Without Christopher Tolkien (21 November 1924 - 16 January 2020), the world of #Tolkien studies and our understanding of his vast expanse of imagination would not have been like now.
A thread of birthday appreciation for #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday 1/13
📷: Josh Dolgin
Christopher was Tolkien's number one fan, the one who understood his father's work after Tolkien himself. Starting from listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins as a kid, he assisted Tolkien in drawing maps and giving feedback during the 15-year gestation of Lord of the Rings. 2/13
He briefly served in Royal Air Force, but it didn't stop his contribution to Tolkien's writing in LOTR, since his father kept sending him parts of LOTR manuscripts. In 1945, he joined The Inklings literary club following Tolkien, where he read parts of LOTR manuscripts. 3/13
19 fiction books by Palestinian authors: novels, short stories, and folktales.
1. My First and Only Love (2021) by Shahar Khalifeh. Nidal, an elderly exile, recounts the story when the 1948 Nakba scattered her family; a story of love and resistance from the eyes of a young girl.
2. Salt Houses (2017) by Hala Alyan.
A story of four generations of the Yacoubs, a middle-class family in Palestine, beginning in Nablus in 1963. It focuses on migration and the struggle between staying connected with one's traditions and still finding a home in a new country.
3. Minor Detail (2017) by Adania Shibli.
This caused a stir after Frankfurt Book Fair canceled the award ceremony for the author. It depicts tragedies shared by a Bedouin-Palestinian girl in 1949 and a woman from modern-day Ramallah who read the girl's fate in newspaper archive.
Chocolate was once associated with witchcraft in colonial Latin America. Women traditionally prepared chocolate for drink and folk medicine, so there was fear that they practiced witchcraft through chocolate, making them subjects of Inquisition's crackdown.
#FolkloreSunday 1/8
Chocolate was known as the "food of gods" and currency in ancient times. According to legend, Aztec emperor Montezuma II drank gallons of it daily for vitality. Chocolate was also consumed for strength in giving birth and menopause, or staying awake for rituals and revelries. 2/8
Women traditionally prepared chocolate drink and the association carried as the Inquisition purged "heretical practices", including folk medicine. Historian Martha Few said that many testimonies featured chocolate, like those who feared women put potion in their morning cup. 3/8
In Tolkien's works, Faerie is seen as the land of endless beauty and peril. Humility is required here, or disasters strike. The concept is also present in Hutan Larangan ("forbidden forest"), prevalent in various cultures in Indonesia. 1/8
A 🧵for #Tolkien and #FolkloreSunday
In Tolkien's early writing, an explorer, Eriol, was about to enter a tiny magical house called the Cottage of Lost Play. The house asked him to will himself to be as tiny as the "little folk" to enter. We can read it as a test of Eriol's humility. 2/8
🎨: Amani Warrington
One of Tolkien's "fairy poems" showed the consequence of acting with arrogance when you got a chance to enter the Faerie: the unnamed narrator was reduced to a rambling wreck, suffering an indescribable feeling of loss. 3/8